#5 AltaVista

AltaVista was the world’s first search engine. It was created by researchers at Digital Equipment Corporation's Network Systems Laboratory and Western Research Laboratory, who were trying to provide services to make finding files on the public network easier. AltaVista was publicly launched as an internet search engine on December 15, 1995 at altavista.digital.com.

It was then acquired by Yahoo! and was once one of the most popular search engines but lost its ground due to the rise of Google. In May 2011, Yahoo! shut down the site.

AltaVista gained its popularity by having a minimalistic interface, something modern search companies like Google and Yahoo have learned from. AltaVista proved the importance of said minimalism by causing its own demise when it added more complexity to its interface.

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